![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper investigates the bottom-up preference formation over the draft Directive over services liberalization and its impact on co-decision at the European Union (EU) level from the theoretical perspective of discursive institutionalism. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the anti-liberal discourse framed by the French left led President Chirac to reconfigure his strategic interests and embrace a strongly anti-liberal stance against the proposed Directive. Secondly, evidence that the anti-liberal discourse framed by the radical left was very efficient in politicizing the Directive proposal is provided. This forced the governments to act responsively towards public opinions while using communicative discourse in the intergovernmental realm. Since the French position overlapped some of the key actors' preferences, it played a crucial role in altering the initial balance of power. The quest for a compromise securing a super-qualified majority within the European Parliament implied both the use of communicative discourse against the Bolkestein proposal and the relative neutralization of its anti-liberal aspects.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Vivien Schmidt and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. I am also very grateful to Katya Long for providing a more than relevant proofreading of the manuscript.
Notes
The title is a reference to Vivien Schmidt's Citation(2007) article.
The strategy advocated by the Commission, i.e., a single global and far-reaching directive to tackle most obstacles to the free movement of services, was approved by the Council and Parliament in 2002–3: Report of the Commission: ‘The state of the Internal Market for services’, COM (2002) 441 final, 30 July 2002; Resolution of the European Parliament on the Commission Communication: 2002, Review of the Internal market Strategy, 13 February 2003; Conclusions no. 13839/02 the Council – Competitiveness, 14 November 2002: 11.
The Belgian political and social left actually pioneered contestation against the directive proposal. However, since the Socialists were in a governmental coalition with the Liberals, they could never reach a coherent governmental position. The Belgian impact in the Council therefore remained very limited.
The Germans were also quite crucial to the whole debate. Protest from the left nevertheless remained inaudible for quite a long time. The SPD – then in government – was divided on the issue and from September 2005, it was governing with the Christlich Demockratische Union (CDU) in the Great coalition. It was rather E. Gebhardt, the German rapporteur in the European Parliament, who, with the help of the unions, had to convince her own party and government to embrace a critical position. Interview with E. Gebhardt, Brussels, June 2008; interview with S. Skarpelis-Sperk, rapporteur on the Services Directive in the German Bundestag, Berlin, December 2008.
96/71/CE.
In its monitoring of the implementation of the Directive on posted workers, the Commission mentions major problems with regard to compliance with labour law. See Commission Report on the application of Directive 96/71/EC, January 2003, and Communication ‘The application of Directive 96/71/EC in the Member States’, COM (2003) 458 final, 25 July 2003.
It should be mentioned here that, although they have been explicitly excluded from the directive's scope in the final draft, the services of general (non-economic) interest, such as mandatory school, justice, police, etc., automatically could not be submitted to EU competition rules.
Audition of the Minister for European affairs by the committee for foreign affairs of the Senate, 07 February 2006.
Medef, ‘L'essentiel de la proposition de directive sur les services’, April 2005, available online at http://www.medef.fr/medias/upload/76710_FICHIER.pdf (accessed 11 May 2009) (my translation).
The Commission ordered two studies which predicted up to 60 per cent rise of the intra-European services trade and the potential creation of 600,000 jobs in services: ‘Economic assessment of the barriers to the internal market for services. Final report,’ Copenhagen Economics, January 2005; ‘A quantitative assessment of the EU proposals for the internal market for services’, Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, 23 September 2004; ‘The free movement of services within the E’, October 2004, revised in September 2005, available online at http://www.cpb.nl/eng/news/2005_40.html (accessed 18 January 2008). These studies are considered by many to be biased and weak, in particular because they do not take into account social and environmental impact as well as potential job destruction related to the implementation of the CoOP.
At the first meeting of the Competitiveness Council in March 2004, the proposal was ‘welcomed’ by a broad majority of member states, with some of them being very favourable to far-reaching liberalization grounded on the CoOP, namely Luxemburg, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the UK, and the Baltic and Scandinavian countries: Interview with a diplomat (1), Brussels, June 2008. A smaller group of countries, composed of Belgium, France and Portugal, expressed some criticism on the technical issues related to the application the CoOP: interview with a diplomat (2), Brussels, May 2008. Although more discrete, the German government and especially the Social-democratic Minister for economics in charge, saw the CoOP as a great opportunity for a broad opening of the services market: interview with a diplomat (3), Berlin, December 2008.
President Jacques Chirac, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin and Delegate Minister for European affairs Catherine Colonna.
I have not attempted to quantify occurrences of the frames because the outcome in term of numbers would make little sense, since it depends on the length of the press articles as well as from the total number of documents scrutinized. Moreover, all words are not equal in a political discourse.
Except for a short article in Le Monde dedicated to the adoption of the Commission proposal on the 14 January, which does not mentions critical issues related to the draft.
Interview with a diplomat, Brussels, June 2008.
Interview with Claude Debons, Paris, February 2007. C. Debons is a former union member, a high level activist in the alterglobalist Copernic Foundation. He was in charge of the co-ordination of the Collectif national pour un non de gauche.
Le Monde, 19 January 2004.
Press release by the National Council of the PS, 25 January 2005.
Le Monde, 02 February 2005
‘Proposition de résolution sur la proposition de directive du Parlement européen et du Conseil relative aux services dans le marché intérieur’, no. 2054, 02 February 2005.
Interview with Jérôme Lambert, PS MP, Paris, February 2009.
A diplomat interviewed (Brussels, June 2008) said that J. Chirac in person had called the French permanent representation in Brussels and demanded that the French representatives stop going to the meetings of the Council working groups.
Le Monde 11 February 2005, 13 February 2005.
Le Monde 03 March 2005.
Le Monde 17 March 2005.
Interview with a diplomat (1), Brussels, May 2008; interview with a diplomat (2), Brussels, May 2008; interview with a diplomat (3), Berlin, December 2008.
‘Deutsch-französisches Treffen: Widerstand gegen geplante EU-Dienstleistungsrichtlinie’, Spiegel 07 March 2005.
Interview with Evelyne Gebhardt, Brussels, June 2008; interview with Angelika Schwall-Düren, Vice-President of the SPD parliamentary group in charge of European affairs, Madrid, December 2008.
‘Schröders Protektionismus bei der EU’, Spiegel 15 February 2005; ‘Deutsch-französisches Treffen: Widerstand gegen geplante EU-Dienstleistungsrichtlinie’, Spiegel 07 March 2005.
Le Monde 22 March 2005.
European Parliament, ‘Working paper over the Directive for services in the internal market, PE 353.297’, 21 December 2004; European Parliament, ‘Draft report on the draft Services Directive for services in the internal market, PE 355.744v04-00’, 25 May 2005.
ETUC press release, 13 March 2005.
Interview with a diplomat, Brussels, June 2008.
Interview with E. Gebhardt; interview with A. Van Lancker; interview with Robert Goebbels, Vice-President of the PES-Group, Brussels, September 2008; interview with a PES official, Brussels, May 2008.
‘La version définitive de la Directive “Services” consacre la maturité du Parlement européen - par Bernard Lehideux’, available online at http://www.udf-europe.net (accessed 18 May 2009).
Libération 21 November 2005.
Interview with a PES official; interview with a Belgian PS official, Brussels, May 2008; interview with a French PS official, May 2008; interview with R. Goebbels; interview with E. Gebhardt; interview with an ETUC staff member, Brussels, September 2008.
Interview with a PES official, Brussels, May 2008.
Interview with Evelyne Gebhardt.
